Under the Influence
by Melee
Summary: COMPLETE. Rowen completely and in every way fails to keep it platonic. RowenxRyo. Yaoi, shounen ai.


Note: The heroes' living arrangements are somewhat arbitrary. Know that Cye and Ryo live at Mia's house while Rowen hangs around nearly 24/7. There will not be a test later, and everything I just told you will be mentioned in the story whether you read the note or not. Enjoy.

* * *

Title: Under the Influence  
Author: Melee  
Fandom: Ronin Warriors  
Warnings: Necking. Like, boy on boy necking.  
Disclaimer: Ronin Warriors not mine, but they have my love.  
Summary: Rowen completely and in every way fails to keep it platonic.

* * *

**Thursday.**

* * *

Three boys stood loitering at the top of the cement steps at the school's back entrance. Students bustled in and out of the doors,to home or to after-school clubs. The biggest of the three loiterersgestured backwards, pleading, "Come on, it's about to start!"

Another, taller than the first but slender, shook his head at the suggestion, tossing short auburn curls. "No, Kento," he said, pulling his coat tighter, breath steaming in the winter air. "I have too much to do."

"Ryo?" Kento asked hopefully, pulling at Ryo's worn corduroy sleeve. The last boy was a slender figure, shorter than the others but with strength hidden beneath the worn jeans and baggy shirts.

"I have indoor," Ryo said with a shrug. "I'm sorry." His sambas crunched on the salt spread across the pavement as he turned to go.

Kento watched him go, heartbroken and desperate, before turning back to the second boy's tolerant smile. "Please, Cye? I know the guy starting, and I _promised_..."

"Sorry, unless you can write me a paper on Crime and Punishment..." Cye echoed Ryo's shrug, catching at the soccer player's arm as he left, holding him back. Ryo blinked, but waited with his hands in his pockets.

Kento winced, bringing a laugh to Cye's lips that was not altogether kind. "Look," the bigger ronin started, nervously twisting the strap of his black shoulder bag. Weeks ago, when he'd first worn it to school, Cye had given him no end of grief about his trendy attempt to blend in with the crowd.

Sage had one just like it in brown.

"Ugh," Ryo answered for him. He tossed his head, flicking the end of his black ponytail back over his shoulder.

"I didn't think so," Cye said with a sigh, squinting at the sun that slanted into his eyes with the onset of a November evening. He pulled Ryo with him as he left.

"Hey," Kento called after them with new energy to his voice, "What'd you think about starting a band? We could call it 'Ronin Jam' or something. Yeah?"

Cye nearly staggered, tossing his head back with his mirth as if he couldn't think of a reply deserving of the question. Ryo only glanced back, not meaning to stop, but Cye's hand on his arm was determined to physically bring him into the conversation. Turning impatiently, he just wanted to wave and leave, anything to get that little bit closer to his soccer practice.

Instead, his twisting shoe hit a patch of unsalted ice, slipping out from under him and pulling him down. Surprised, he reached out and Cye went with him.

Kento ran forward, too late. At the bottom of the steps, Cye curled around his wrist, twisted from catching himself against the concrete when Ryo was falling backwards onto his own book bag, his head cracking against the frozen sidewalk.

"Damn it," Cye muttered. "Ryo?" He put a hand to his friend's still cheek, but Ryo's eyes stayed closed. "_Ryo_?"

From the top of the steps, Kento cursed, "Shit!"

* * *

Kento had more familiarity with emergency rooms than most. He'd learned in the course of his lifetime, with the his little siblings and their split knees and broken bones, that the people complaining the loudest were usually the ones who didn't need to be hurried in. The real job was finding the guy who'd collapsed quietly against a wall and didn't remember where he was. 

With this in mind, bumping Ryo up the line wasn't difficult, seeing as how head wounds liked to bleed, and added emphasis to the abused ankle that kept him from walking on his own.

He'd been ushered away quickly enough, Cye following in his wake, and there wasn't anything Kento could do but wait under the yellow lights that blurred the distinction between the waiting room's green walls and green chairs and green tiled floor.

Someone dropped a bag at his feet, saying with a sigh, "Ryo's bag should still be in the car. Could you..." The speaker hesitated. "Kento?"

He looked up.

Cye was standing in front of his chair, holding one of the straps of a blue backpack with his good hand, his complexion turned to wax in the yellow lights against the green. His right hand was wrapped and held close to his body, bruised and sprained from landing between Ryo and hard ground.

Kento looked away from the TV in the corner, pushing the book bag beneath his chair. He didn't ask about Ryo. "Yeah, okay. Mia's coming, right?"

"Yes," Cye said anxiously, "she said she'd come as soon as she could, but her house isn't very close..."

Kento pulled Cye into a chair with a hand on his coat sleeve, the fabric damp from the ice and snow of his fall. He nodded across the room towards his mother speaking to the receptionist.

"Don't worry," he said quietly. "As much time as you think this could possibly take, it will take twice as long and Ryo will be _fine_." He made the victory sign, flashing two fingers at Cye's weary face. "Trust me! Do you know how many brats I've had to sit through this for?"

Cye smiled weakly. "It's nothing serious, is it? Not to us, right?"

"Right," Kento agreed.

"You know," Cye murmured, shivering a little with the chill, "for a second, I really thought he wasn't going to wake up..."

"He woke up right away," Kento promised. "It just _seemed_ like hours. I fell off a swing-set once, and my mom..."

Kento's mother was a big woman in a culture with a dainty ideal, but Cye had always found her beautiful for the smile lines around her mouth, the easy way she had with people. The story grew into hyperbole as Cye listened with a smile, Kento dropping it as his mother approached, a woman with Kento's face and build, her muscles gained from work not play.

Her smile was muted now, confiding to her son with soft concern, "They couldn't reach his parents."

"It's okay, Mama," Kento repeated, standing and gesturing her towards the door. "Cye will stay and Mia's on her way. We left all the kids at home with dinner burning. Ryo's okay, I promise."

His mother frowned. "I've heard that name for the first time today. How come he's never come over? Is he a bad sort that you're hiding from me? Kento – "

The bigger ronin cast a horrified glance at Cye, pulling his mother from the hospital, snatching up Ryo's backpack as he went. Cye smiled, watching him go. He took the first step back to Ryo's room before he remembered.

Then he was turning back suddenly, calling, "Kento! Kento, wait!"

Hardrock turned, apprehensive. "Yeah?"

Cye swallowed, not really sure how to breach the subject, but if Kento dropped his and Ryo's things at Mia's house, it would undoubtedly come up. "Break it to Rowen easy, okay?" he said finally. "He'll freak out."

Kento blinked.

And laughed. "No, Cye," he corrected, "he'll _totally_ freak out."

* * *

Two days later... 

**Saturday.**

* * *

Ryo woke up, tossing his head a little as he moved, the black hair falling back from his face. He paused for a moment, wondering what had woken him. Not the television, it had been on when he'd fallen asleep. He turned his head and stopped, startled. 

Rowen was watching him from the other side of the coffee table, the television behind him flashing the room with the hectic battles of some shounen anime. When he noticed Ryo watching, Rowen shrugged, turning back to the television like it was no big deal for Ryo to catch him at it. He took a few more chips from a bowl on the table, not looking back.

But uncertainty tugged at the emptiness in Ryo's chest where Inferno had bound the armors together, bound them to _Ryo_, and Ryo didn't think the emotion was his own. Ryo thought Rowen had been more than just glancing in his direction, sitting as he was, conspicuously sideways where any less than subtle glances were easily hidden behind the TV's easy alibi.

Ryo pushed himself up, feeling his back protest, sore from hitting ice over sidewalk. He put a hand to the back of the couch, resolving to go about this slowly since he didn't trust his balance when he felt so groggy.

"Ryo, watch it !" Rowen was there too suddenly for someone who had only been paying casual attention. He might've jumped right over the coffee table, but Ryo's short term memory wasn't so good at the moment.

"M'fine. I just hafta go to the bathroom, okay?" Ryo glared dangerously, hiding a blush that he'd have to justify taking a piss.

Rowen hesitated, a hand drifting to brush fingers against the cast that swallowed Ryo's ankle. "I'll get your crutches," he said.

And almost before Ryo noticed, he was gone, leaving Ryo to ponder the sudden absence of blue.

* * *

"...and Mia would definitely let us practice here, you know?" Kento continued, tapping a thoughtful finger against his thigh. "We're always here anyway, especially since Cye and Ryo moved in. How's your voice?" 

He slouched a little, propping his elbows on his knees at the edge of the bed, considering the postered walls of _Star Wars_ and _Dragonball_. One wall was still white and blank from a time when the room had been Sage's also.

From the desk in the corner, Sage now turned slowly to stare him down, arching a thin eyebrow over an eye of icy gray. "Excuse me?" he said.

Kento blinked, sensing danger. "Fangirls, dude," he explained. "We need a pull."

"You want me," Sage repeated incredulously, staring through the fall of his hair, "to get you fangirls." His expression of horror didn't affect the pale, sculpted beauty of his face.

Kento shrugged. "If at all possible, yeah."

* * *

Ryo stood outside the bathroom, perplexed. The door was stuck on a fold of the rug; when Ryo pushed, the door pushed back, closing but not latching. At a loss, he pushed again, but the door still drifted shut. 

After the third dazed push, Rowen caught his wrist, stepping past him to kick the rug out of the way and open the door. "You are so drugged," he muttered. "Are you sure I can leave you in here all by your lonesome?"

Ryo glowered. Rowen made himself wisely scarce.

* * *

"I think you're just afraid of the fame," Kento observed. Sage put his head down on the desk in misery. 

"My homework – Kento – " he pleaded.

The door opened, and Rowen entered, oddly tense. He frowned, as if he had not expected to see them there. "Dudes, my room," he said. "Out."

"Dude, you're like a hobo squatter," Kento shot back. "Find another."

There was a certain truth to that, Sage admitted to himself, though he didn't say it aloud. No matter how many nights Rowen spent in Mia's house, he – like Sage and Kento - had supposedly moved back in with family after Talpa's defeat.

That annoyed the archer though, his expression going tight. "It _used_ to be my room. Look," he declared petulantly, kicking at a pile of cloth on the floor, "I don't see _your_ underwear on the floor."

Kento ignored him, saying to Sage, who was watching Rowen curiously, "How about 'The Demons' Bane Rockers'? Sounds pretty butch."

"Why not cut right to the heart and say 'Talpa's Bane'?" Sage suggested blandly, his eyes on Rowen's blue hair where it fell forgotten into his face. "They'll think we're named after a tree."

"We?" Kento repeated. "I knew you wanted to be a part of it. Now, do you want vocals or instrumental? Will you do drag? We could be like Malice Mizer..."

"Oi, oi, I know!" Rowen interrupted caustically. "How about 'Rainbow Boys'? We're thoughtfully color-coded for your convenience."

Kento nodded, framing his chin between thumb and forefinger, dutifully weighing all suggestions. "The problem with that is we've got two blues, see. That makes a lopsided-rainbow." His eyes flickered over Rowen critically, and he grinned. "So which one of you d'ya think would look better in purple?"

Rowen tackled him. Kento welcomed the lunge with open arms, wrapping him in an steely embrace as they rolled off the bed. Rowen slipped out of his grip as they hit the floor, always difficult to get a hold of. Sage hid a smile behind a hand and a sigh.

"Ah ha! Take that!" Rowen crowed, briefly gaining the advantage until Kento reached up with his big hands, effortlessly peeling the blue-haired boy off his back.

Sage took the opportunity to inquire lightly, "Is Ryo alright?"

In the middle of twisting Kento's arm behind his back, Rowen went rigid and was immediately slammed into the carpet by Hardrock's pounce. He protested loudly, cursing.

"...How should I know?" he snapped at Sage, pushing Kento off, who looked at least a little bit sorry. Breathing heavily from the fight, Rowen muttered, "It's Saturday, can we doing anything other than sit around? I'm going crazy..."

"How's Ryo?" Kento seconded, sitting back on his heels. He pushed up the yellow headband that had fallen down to his eyes in the fight.

For a moment Rowen stared at him, sitting on the gray carpet between the twin beds in the room that had been his during a war. Kento stared back, curious, and Rowen shrugged, reaching up to pull a stack of magazines off the bed, browsing through them mindlessly. Sage watched him patiently, fingers splayed across his notebook. Finally, Rowen said dismissively, "Higher than Mt. Fuji . Any other questions?"

Kento brightened. "Still? I've got to see this."

Extending muscles that had shifted tons, He pushed himself to his feet, moving with the kind of simple grace people sometimes expected from Rowen, who had a habit of knocking over bookshelves. He bounded from the room, leaving Sage to watch Rowen tiredly.

"Rowen," he warned when the archer tried to let the silence stretch, "this has got to stop."

Throwing himself across the bed, Rowen hid behind a J-pop magazine and its beaming idol. "What has to stop?" he asked stubbornly.

And Sage sighed.

* * *

Ryo found he didn't want to return to the couch with Rowen still missing. As if he'd interrupted something by waking and couldn't go back to it without him. 

He wandered into the kitchen instead, sitting at the round table until Cye made him a sandwich he felt too run down to eat. He knew he should eat it. An empty stomach wasn't a good idea on heavy painkillers. Kento had told him so, too late, right after he'd discovered it for himself on Friday.

"Are you sure you don't want to be in bed?" Cye asked softly. Kento had materialized in the doorway. Ryo didn't remember him coming down.

"Why would I be in bed?" Ryo said. He tried to recall what Cye and Kento had been talking about because in his fractured memory it seemed that Kento had been there a while. He rested his chin on his arms, black lashes drifting shut over blue eyes.

"Um," Cye said uncomfortably. He froze over the open dishwasher, clean plates in hand, looking to Kento for help.

Shrugging big shoulders, Kento stepped from the door to lean on the table across from Ryo. He held up a hand as Ryo opened his eyes. "How many?" he asked, wiggling his fingers obnoxiously.

"Two," Ryo snapped, feeling peevish, but Kento only smiled.

"That's better than this morning," he confided to Cye thoughtfully. Brow furrowed, the slighter ronin looked far from reassured.

Ryo put his head down and tried to pretend the world did not exist from behind a veil of dark hair.

* * *

Rowen came back into his life suddenly, putting a hand to his elbow and shoring him up when he misplaced the crutches on the stairs. One of the crutches, an old metal thing scavenged from Mia's attic, clattered down the steps with a racket to make Rowen wince and Cye appear at the lower landing. 

"Ryo?" the slighter ronin asked, stricken.

Ryo's bad foot had slipped when the crutch had gone, jarring painfully against the steps as he hissed in pain. He clutched at Rowen's arms holding him up, putting his face against Rowen's neck to hide the gritted teeth and pain tears.

"Meds," Rowen requested, taking the other crutch from Ryo's hand and leaning it against the wall.

"Do you need any help?" Cye started up the stairs, carrying the fallen crutch.

"No..." Rowen hesitated. "...I've carried him before."

Cye only nodded, so Rowen swept an arm behind Ryo's knees and lifted him with little effort. The motion was oddly theatrical, though however poor a princess Ryo made, Rowen was a stranger prince.

"Rowen – " Ryo objected, gasping as his bad ankle was swung into the air.

"Quiet, Ryo," Rowen suggested. Ryo stared at him, fingers curled in Rowen's t-shirt, dark tangles framing his face.

He was the picture of horrified innocence. Having seen him in fury and vengeance with sword and fire, the image should have been comical, but Rowen flushed with embarrassment he couldn't explain. With any luck at all, Ryo was still too wasted to notice.

The trip to the bedroom went gallantly at first, until the hallway proved too narrow, and Ryo's ankle hit the wall.

"Rowen!" both Ryo and Cye protested. Ryo was harder to hear, speaking the name through clenched teeth.

"Shit!" Rowen said, rather than think of an appropriate apology.

Cye stalked past them, turning Rowen sideways with two hands on the archer's shoulders. Rowen moved with his hands, bringing his burden around, Ryo pushing ineffectually at his chest, glaring at him but unable to escape. "Rowen, you clumsy idiot," Cye muttered, vanishing into the hall bathroom and reappearing with an orange plastic vial. "Go!" He pointed.

Rowen did go, twisting to get through the door, then bending to lay Ryo across the comforter, hiding guilt when Ryo sank into softness of the bed, his hands closed tightly around Rowen's forearms. Cye peeled Ryo's fingers away, shaking two pills into his palm.

"Two...?" Ryo asked blearily, holding himself carefully still.

"Yes. Just take them." Cye held out a glass of water, staying only long enough to see his will done. Rowen crouched by Ryo's bed silently, forgetting to duck the aggravated swipe Cye made at the back of his head in leaving.

Ryo fell back into his pillow, shutting his eyes against the persistent aches, the pain in his ankle, his back, his head. He listened, waiting for Rowen to leave, but there was no sound.

When he opened his eyes, Rowen was watching him again, no distracting anime to hide behind. Hunched beside the bed, he was an ungainly figure of joints and skinny limbs, a visible struggle between the skillfulness of his mind and the awkwardness of his height.

Too many enemies had underestimated him for that, his seeming clumsiness amidst warriors centuries old. High school was a far more fitting place for Rowen's contradictions than any archetypal battle of good versus evil. Even now, Ryo kept Rowen's sharp angles close to himself to remind him that they had survived and that underneath Rowen's teasing grin they were still _so young_.

"Sorry," Rowen said, "that was pretty stupid of me."

"What?" Ryo asked, confused.

"The bit with the wall and your foot."

"Oh," he said, and relaxed, staring at the ceiling.

Rowen blinked, having obviously expected more. "Forgive me?"

Ryo started, turning his head to look at Rowen's unruly hair where the archer's head rested with his cheek on his palm, watching him. There was a pause, as if the words were being pulled from very far away.

"I could have walked by myself," he said.

Rowen didn't reply for a long time. After a slow breath that was filled with all possible arguments about injured ankles and lost crutches and poorly hidden tears, he stood, saying simply, "Okay."

Then he left.

* * *

There was still someone at his desk. He stared at the intruder, and very carefully did not slam the door behind him. 

"Rowen?" Sage asked, dropping his pencil onto his notebook and looking up. Schoolwork was becoming a hopeless task.

Rowen shrugged, his whole posture sinking when his shoulders fell. "Never mind. Just, Ryo's kind of an impossible patient, you know?"

"I've heard rumors," Sage said dryly. He tapped the desk. "Come here."

Warily, Rowen stepped up beside Sage's chair. "What?"

"What's with the attitude, Rowen?" Sage asked bluntly. "Ryo's injury is hardly worth noticing. Not to mention that Cye is injured also."

Rowen sank to the edge of the bed, crossing his arms over his chest, a gesture Sage had come to recognize as something his friend did when he didn't know the answer. The pose looked strangely... academic when Rowen did it. Sage liked that such an intellectual pose hid a mind at a loss.

"It just bothers me. That's all."

Sage frowned. "It's only an ankle, Rowen. Calm down." Rowen glowered at him, but Sage had no intention of looking away.

"Look," Rowen said quietly, "Cye didn't want painkillers for his wrist, right? He got a prescription, but he doesn't take them. Ryo didn't want his either. We _made _him - no, actually, _you_ made him take them."

"I did."

"How come nobody even _considered_ forcing them on Cye?"

Sage's expression turned resigned. "You don't want me to remind you that Ryo's injury is more serious. You want me to say something else."

"_Because_," Rowen continued, "it's _Cye. _We never had to protect Cye. Not like we had to protect Ryo. Not like _I_ did.." To Sage's utter surprise, Rowen blushed, mumbling, "So maybe I got into a bit of a habit..."

"But he plays sports, Rowen. He's active, he's athletic, he's _Ryo,_ and no matter what you do, he's going to get hurt. Ryo will find a way."

"A way to what?" someone asked curiously.

Rowen jumped. Cye stood in the doorway, watching them blankly, a math book in his hand. "Can I join you, Sage?" he asked.

Sage looked between them. To Rowen, he suggested, "Why don't you go bother Ryo some more?"

Rowen snorted, in no way interested in doing what Sage wanted him to do.

...but it would be a good idea to see if Ryo was planning to eat. The sky was starting to shift into evening, and dinner was bound to be in an hour or two. Even if Ryo was still asleep, Rowen could still watch him and just be glad that they were sleeping in a house instead the rank streets of Talpa's city, wondering if their friends were alive or dead.

"Okay," he muttered and left to find Ryo, refusing to witness Sage's satisfaction.

* * *

Ryo was fucked up. That was clear from the first groggy glance, the dopey smile. By Ryo's feet, a mammoth tiger regarded them both with knowing amusement. Rowen ignored the big cat in favor of the drugged boy on the bed. 

"Ryo," he asked skeptically, "did you take another pill?"

"Um... Maybe..." If it had been anybody else, Kento for example, Rowen would have suspected a little blurring of the truth, some embarrassment at taking a few too many.

In this case, it was likely that Ryo honestly didn't remember. It wouldn't be that difficult to manage what with the kind of medication that really messed a person up. Hopefully, he'd only 'maybe-ed' one pill, at the most two since Rowen had seen him last. Overdosing wasn't something Rowen wanted to deal with.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, he took the pill bottle from the small table by Ryo's head, sparing a glare for the tiger that should have been taking better care of his charge. "I'm just going to take this and hide it someplace where you won't sleepwalk, okay?"

Ryo butchered a laugh. "I don shleepwahlk," he slurred, one hand curled by his head on the pillow.

Rowen hesitated, staring, and Ryo grinned at him, black hair casting a shadow across his face that suddenly brought out the deep blue in his eyes. Too often, Ryo's eyes were lost under long eyelashes or in a bright day, passing though the crowd, so easy to overlook.

"Okay," Rowen said, shocked despite himself. His hand clenched the little plastic bottle, but he was trapped in a blue well, waiting for someone to throw him a rope.

White Blaze began to purr triumphantly in defiance of his species, tail curling and uncurling across Ryo's knees. Rowen started, uncomfortably aware that he had been staring and that Ryo's tiger had noticed.

Ryo carefully reached out with one hand while Rowen was distracted, but even so he missed his mark the first time, barely managing to catch Rowen's wrist. At first, Rowen thought he was going for the pills, and his lips twisted into a smile at the thought of Ryo addicted to a narcotic.

But Ryo's hand stilled on Rowen's, his eyes drifting shut, dark lashes laid against his caramel skin. It really was seductive, Rowen reflected, and it never occurred to him that the thought was anything other than objectively logical. Ryo looked so _muted_ in sleep, lines both of delight and worry smoothed into peace under his soft hair.

The image brought with it a fresh pang of fear and a memory of hiding hunted under a rocky overhang, waiting for Ryo to wake. With his uncaught hand, Rowen reached out to brush the hair from Ryo's face.

"I will always protect you," he whispered, for a moment perfectly honest, though later he would be embarrassed at the concession to his own inner drama.

He meant to leave then, or maybe wait, in silence with Ryo's hand on his wrist, but instead, Ryo murmured, "M'sorry."

"For what, Ryo?" Rowen leaned forward because now Ryo was struggling to sit up. He was less adept at it than one might expect from such a graceful athlete.

"Ryo, what is it? What do you need?" Rowen bent over him, a hand hovering at Ryo's shoulder but not quite willing to push him back down into the blanket. The tiger had gone quiet.

Ryo looked up, balanced with his forearms beneath him on the bed, eyes widening at finding the other so close. Rowen could see the tear tracks from the stairs still marring the skin of his cheeks. Then Ryo's eyes focused on something in Rowen's face, and as if he'd forgotten about everything he'd been meaning to say, he leaned the rest of the way towards him and –

- and kissed him.

For a moment it was just lips on lips and unexpected heat, but then Ryo was pushing forward, putting an arm around Rowen's shoulders to keep him there. Rowen went rigid and would have stayed that way if Ryo hadn't pulled so insistently on his shirt. So he moved forward too, sliding a hand to Ryo's stomach, surprised to encounter skin.

It was just skin, he told himself, hardly forbidden skin that Ryo would bare without care swimming in the lake or changing for bed, but it was entirely different than reason said it should be to be touching skin that was not his own.

It was smooth and it was warm and god, it was _Ryo._ More than anything it was simply outrageous and that was driving him insane. He put his tongue against Ryo's lips for a taste of something he couldn't describe. When he stopped to breathe, Ryo kissed him again, fisting a hand in the hair behind his neck. And then Ryo was putting his tongue –

Rowen jerked back in shock. Ryo blinked at him slowly.

He fumbled, "Sorry - your tongue – I was just, um, surprised – that you, um." He put a hand to his mouth, and noticing the daze in Ryo's eyes, he remembered the drug.

"God damn," he said through his fingers. "You're like – fucked up – and I'm _such _an asshole."

The tiger growled then, shifting the mattress with his weight like he was ready to spring, and Rowen fled, though not from him.

* * *

**Sunday.**

* * *

That Saturday night, Rowen did something he almost never did anymore. He went home. 

He did it to avoid dealing with the kiss and to delay the greater apology he felt he owed Ryo. He justified it with a healthy layer of self-disgust and a certainty that Ryo would prefer he stayed away. Perhaps indefinitely.

His own bed felt unfamiliar after so many nights whiling away the hours in a borrowed room. The empty apartment was an entirely separate reality, a cold one in which he had never felt Ryo's heat against his lips and encircling his body as Ryo put his arms around Rowen's neck to keep him there.

He watched the daylight creep through the blinds to cast slatted shadows across his sheets, yesterday seeming like nothing more than a dream. He sat up, awake but aimless. This was that other world where his mother never came home and there was no one to laugh with him over the morning cartoons. He bent over his hands where they gripped his blankets, closing his eyes in an effort to give him room to _think._

It had been real, he knew, though he wished now that it had been some sort of blameless accident, that the medication had passed from Ryo's lips to his own during that first delirious moment and nothing afterwards had really been Rowen's fault.

No. He had liked that kiss too much.

The drug, the drug, the drug, his mind chanted at him, as if it could fill up his head and bring thought to a standstill. If the kiss had meant something to him, it had meant nothing to Ryo, who had been so far gone. And that would be unforgiveable.

Gender was such an easy way to trivialize the whole mistake that he spent some time attempting to achieve the proper horror. You kissed a guy, it was wrong, you kissed another guy.

He wasted another hour on his back, half off the bed, the bottom of his t-shirt falling down to his neck, ignoring the chilly air on his chest and dwelling on the blow by blow mechanics of gay sex, which didn't sound exactly comfortable.

But feeling Ryo warm under his hands, it was harder than usual to remember why gender made any sense at all. To kiss Ryo - it had crossed his mind and then some every time Ryo returned from battle against all odds, alive and mostly unscathed. After putting Rowen's heart through the wringer like that, Ryo fucking owed it to him.

Only... it had never occurred to him that it'd be good. He'd _thought _about it, but there could be no second step to his fear-induced imaginings becausehe simply _wasn't wired like that_. It wasn't his fault that Ryo had a way of scaring the living shit out of him when he launched himself at evil without care for life or limb. It wasn't lust. It was joy and relief and the desire to scream out his glee so that everyone could see. So that everyone would know Ryo had survived another absurdity.

Not that anything he thought of did him any good. Ryo had been totally fucked up, and when it wore off, he'd want to know why Rowen had gone along with it, Rowen who should have been both sober and sane.

Ryo most definitely would not be wanting to try it again.

Unless Rowen could get him hammered again. Drag him along to a booze party, introduce him to the spiked punch. Almost perfect. Except that it wasn't.

He rolled the rest of the way off the bed, lying there, his stomach bare against the old carpeting where his t-shirt had bunched up around his chest. He knew he'd have to go back to the house eventually to face up to what he'd done. Ryo deserved that much, but he meant to put if off as long as possible.

Cye called at noon from Mia's.

"Why are you still at home? Is your mother there?" he wanted to know. "Kento wants to go to a movie later. You don't... have other plans, do you?"

The innocent confusion told Rowen that Ryo had not spoken of Saturday night to anyone. If he had, Cye would have had more on his mind than simple bewilderment that the Ronin of Strata was not where he should be.

Rowen bowed to inevitability.

* * *

He came in through the front door of the Mia, pausing on the rich wood floor of Mia's grand entrance. Big windows cast bright, sunlight grids on the walls and the floors. Today, unlike other days, his study of the paintings on the walls wasn't interest, but a desperate hope to put any extra second between himself and Ryo. 

"Don't smear it, Kento," Cye warned from the next room and Rowen looked up, confused.

"Bug off, twitface."

That was Kento, speaking from the smaller living room past the doorway to the right. It held the television and a well-loved couch, and between them the video games Rowen hadn't bothered taking home for a month now. He couldn't hear the TV, but Cye and Kento were enthralled by something. Was Ryo there?

"Yulie's handwriting is better than yours," Cye mourned. "I'm glad at least the one of you passed elementary school."

"Where did _he_ sign it?" Kento wanted to know.

"There." Cye might have pointed at something, somewhere behind the wall.

Kento gave an exaggerated gasp. "Well, whaddya know, it is better!" He snorted, and Rowen relaxed into their familiar bickering.

Ryo spoke.

"Yulie signed it on Friday," Wildfire said softly, "so he could be first." He sounded tired. Rowen tensed.

The front door drifted shut behind him. The sound of the latch was minute, but Kento called out, "Oi, Rowen? Sage?" He came into the entrance, turning his head curiously, a black marker in his hand. He brightened to see Rowen standing there in his coat and scarf.

"I was wondering when you'd come," he said.

"Sorry," Rowen lied. "I slept in."

Kento shifted back, crossing his arms and tapping the marker against his lips. "You don't look like someone who's had enough sleep." Rowen winced.

"Are you coming in?" Cye called.

Kento stepped back through the arched doorway, reassuring him with a laugh. "Yeah, of course," he said, "but I warn you, he looks like he's ready to star in a zombie flick." He pulled Rowen into the room.

Rowen didn't see anything but Ryo.

The ronin of wildfire stared up at him from the couch, catching Rowen in that azure gaze, and Rowen felt he had to say something, at the very least indicate that he _meant_ to say something but later, when Cye and Kento were elsewhere.

But Ryo just shrugged, turning back to where Cye was sitting on the coffee table, Ryo's cast held carefully between his knees while he drew some sort of tropical fish with a blue marker in his left hand. His sprained wrist rested on his thigh next to the cast. A few other markers of different colors were scattered across the table top.

"You want a go?" Kento asked behind him, holding out the black marker. To Rowen's mind at that instant, it sounded lewd. It was difficult, in his current insanity, to pretend he wasn't interested.

A shrug? What in the hell could Ryo mean with a shrug? 'No, big deal, forget it'? 'Let's talk about it later'? What about 'you vile molester, you are not worthy of my gaze'?

"Rowen, do know where Ryo's meds have gotten to?" Cye asked, his head bowed over his artwork.

Rowen started. "What?"

"Not that I can fault you for hiding them really. Ryo _did_ take a few too many last night." The teenager in question flushed red. Cye looked up now, with a hint of a smirk. "You can't imagine the things he got up to..."

Either Ryo really hadn't told them or he had made out with _everyone_ in the house until Rowen's own little taste of Wildfire was no longer shocking. Rowen felt his fists clenching under the long sleeves of his jacket.

"No, I guess I can't imagine," he managed, "not until you tell me." Laughing, Kento put a hand to Rowen's chest, giving him a push backwards to the couch, his other hand pressing the black marker into Rowen's palm.

"Well, that's the point," the big ronin explained. "We can't imagine either, since Ryo can't tell us, seeing as how he was so out of it he doesn't even remember getting into bed."

Rowen's mind blanked, his hand closing mechanically around the marker being pushing into his hand. Ryo didn't... remember?

A final shove at his shoulder sent Rowen sprawling onto the couch next to the object of his guilt's obsession. He ended knees spread, one arm thrown unexpectedly behind Ryo's shoulders, another over the arm of the couch. Ryo didn't even flinch; he was too busy glaring at Kento in acute embarrassment.

Rowen thought his heart had stopped when Kento spoke, but now it made up for the loss, beating against his throat. "Wait," he demanded, reaching for Kento's sleeve, "you said he - " He turned to Ryo who was blushing and ducking his head, "You - you don't remember _anything_?"

Ryo looked up at him through dark hair and darker lashes, his blush fading into confusion. For a moment, Rowen forgot that he'd ever thought himself insane for wanting to kiss someone with such astonishing eyes. "Why?" Ryo asked and his face held no recognition, "What happened?"

Rowen couldn't catch his breath. Memory was pressing against his lips with a demanding heat. God, what does a person say to that? Yeah, Ryo. I put my tongue in your mouth and you let me. What say to a repeat?

"Nothing," he said. And getting up abruptly, he left.

"Rowen!" Cye stopped him on the stairs where Ryo had nearly fallen only the day before. Rowen remembered vividly Cye shaking two small white pills into Ryo's hand after Rowen had so carefully laid him on the bed. Disastrous medication.

"Rowen," Cye repeated, and Rowen looked up, his face blank. "Do you have the painkillers?"

Cye was standing below him, a hand on the banister, one foot on the stairs in midstep as he watched at the dazed boy above him. Numbly, Rowen put a hand into the pocket of the dark coat he still hadn't taken off. While Cye watched him curiously, he drew out the orange bottle that had been lost.

"I guess that's a good a place as any," Cye said slowly, as if he hadn't quite finished considering the words before they left his mouth, "but I don't know why you took them home with you."

Rowen barely remembered sitting on the swaying bus last night, city lights passing over him, staring at the plastic vial he hadn't meant to take with him and the faint embarrassment as he slipped it into his coat when the speakers called out his stop.

"Sorry, I was... I was distracted," Rowen explained hopelessly. He took two steps down and pushed the bottle into Cye's hands.

Cye frowned. For a moment, Rowen felt his gut turn icy at the expression, terrified that he was going to pry.

Instead Cye took his arm silently, pulling Rowen along to the kitchen where Ryo ate cup ramen at the small table by the refrigerator. Mia read the newspaper next to him, occasionally looking up to make sure he was eating. The crutches leaned against the wall between their chairs.

Rowen was grateful to see Mia watch over Ryo so closely, but the emotion was followed by a sick jealously that danced painfully along his nerves and made him stop against the doorway, suddenly light-headed.

* * *

Ryo felt more than saw Rowen come into the room. He looked up, chopsticks half raised to his mouth, to see Rowen leaning against the doorframe, his eyes forlorn. He was watching Ryo so steadily that Ryo didn't look away until Cye spoke, starting with surprise since Ryo hadn't known he was there until that moment. 

"Ryo," Cye called and held out the drugs the hospital had given him.

"Oh, there they are," Mia said in her sweet voice, looking up from her article. She brushed a strand of chestnut hair behind her ear and smiled at Ryo, who never failed to be flustered by her attention.

Ryo blushed a little, setting the bowl of ramen on the table. The blank spot in his memory from last night was unsettling, but the pain in his ankle made him reach for the bottle in Cye's hand without hesitation.

He wished now that he hadn't let Kento and Cye break out the markers, turning his cast into their afternoon pastime. Cye wasn't left handed, and the blue fish he'd added above Ryo's arch had been jarring, though Cye wouldn't have noticed, being on the wrong side of the cast to feel the pain.

So he took the pill, cradling it in one hand while Cye filled a glass with water. Rowen still hadn't come into the kitchen completely, studying the flowered paper that trailed up the wall instead. There was a tightness to his mouth and a weight to his eyes that worried Ryo, though not as much as the distance between them.

Rowen was always taking the chair next to Ryo, throwing an arm negligently across Ryo's shoulders or around his waist while Rowen leaned forward to emphasize some jibe at Cye or maybe Sage. He hadn't been like that at first, before Inferno, but Rowen's _proximity_ had been natural law since they entered the dynasty together searching for three captured friends.

Ryo had never asked about it. During that hellish rescue, Rowen had so often held him up when he should have fallen that it was only a relief to find that nothing had changed with the return of peace.

He thought back to the pills whose location only Rowen had known. Meaning that Rowen had been there for whatever Ryo couldn't remember and that afterwards he had gone home. Rowen never went home; there was nothing there to draw him but a mother who traveled too often and a shelf of books he'd already read.

"Rowen," Ryo asked, to have something to say. "Are you going to the movie with Kento?"

Rowen straightened so that he pulled away from the doorframe and stood awkwardly on his own. He had some difficulty meeting Ryo's eyes. "I don't know," he said. "When?"

"Later..." Ryo answered vaguely, trailing off when Cye placed the cup of water front of him. He didn't reach for it, and to his surprise Mia put a comforting hand over his own.

"You look down today," she told Rowen kindly, but her hand over Ryo's was firm. She looked between the two of them meaningfully, and Ryo saw Rowen blanch. He pulled his hand from Mia's, feeling childish and pampered.

He meant to take the water and the pill then, but Rowen seemed to pull himself together, smiling recklessly. He had a sort of frightening charisma when he bothered to use it, playful yet charming in its self-mockery.

"Guess you'd better take the pill, Ryo," he said and shrugged, a gesture which seemed to hold all manner of amusement and regret.

Unbidden, Ryo's mind called up the memory of another smile with the softness of Rowen's hair under his hand and an altogether _different_ kind of nearness.

He dropped the pill, unbalanced, watching it bounce and tumble across the tabletop. He had taken too many last night, Cye had said. He hadn't thought they could still be affecting him, but he had never taken anything that could make him high before.

"I don't want another one," he said when Rowen frowned and Mia's hand returned to put a questioning pressure on his wrist.

"Are you sure?" Cye asked.

"I..." Ryo groped for an explanation and felt a rising, desperate fury. "I don't like it messing with my head."

Rowen pulled back, his face gone suddenly slack, almost bored. "Usually the person getting messed up can't tell," he said, staring at the wallpaper. Ryo watched him and felt the anger drain away.

"...I can tell," he said. If Rowen had bothered to look, he would have seen the expression on Ryo's face and the flush on his cheeks.

* * *

**Monday.**

* * *

Ryo opened his eyes, his face resting against soft tiger fur. His ankle was a numb weight at the end of his leg that woke painfully as he remembered it. White Blaze lifted his head curiously when Ryo closed his fist in the tiger's fur, his teeth clenched around an indrawn breath. His headache too was returning since he'd declined the painkiller yesterday afternoon. 

The orange bottle of the prescription he had been given was still sitting downstairs on the counter, but too much of his recent past was losing itself in the drug for him to take another one, no matter the pain from moving his foot. Most importantly, he still didn't know if he should be apologizing to Rowen about a Saturday he had forgotten or not.

He stared at the ceiling, trying to segregate hazy recollections into dreams and non-dreams. White Blaze sniffed at his face, his whiskers brushing against Ryo's cheeks. A pink tiger tongue darted out to give him a mocking kiss on the mouth.

"Ewww, you stupid cat," Ryo muttered, and then stopped, burying his face in the tiger's fur to chase a memory that was just out of reach.

A memory of kisses and a bed and a tiger who dabbled in voyeurism. It couldn't possibly be real, but he didn't trust himself to dream it. It was something he'd forgotten, something days old.

Something about Rowen.

* * *

Ryo laid a trap at the breakfast table. Hands closed tightly around his crutches, he stared at his miso soup and breathed through the pain of a too hasty trip down the stairs. 

Cye frowned at him across the table. "You're not planning to go to school today are you?"

Ryo shut his eyes, resting his forehead against the cool metal of a crutch. "No," he said.

Mia stood, putting her dishes by the sink before passing a dishcloth over the countertop where she'd prepared the meal. "I have class at the University until one, Ryo, but there's some food in the fridge if you feel up to using the microwave." She turned around, favoring him with a teasing smile.

Today though, Ryo didn't feel his usual embarrassment at Mia's pretty face. He only nodded, watching her exit the room with some relief. Cye stood to go after her, but Ryo hissed, "Cye," and caught his sleeve.

"What is it, Ryo?" Cye asked curiously, leaning down.

"Would it be really ridiculous if I asked…" Ryo trailed off uncertainly, shifting his ankle with a wince. Cye noticed.

"Should I get the painkillers?"

"No!" Ryo said. "Cye, did anybody kiss me? Saturday?"

Cye's head pulled back, lips parted in surprise. "_Kiss you?_" he demanded incredulously.

Ryo looked away. "Never mind," he said. "It didn't really happen. It was the drugs..." Cye was staring at him, irrevocably interested. Ryo repeated futilely, "Never mind."

"A dream about somebody kissing you? Who was it?"

Ryo glared. "I said never mind." He pushed his crutches between them like he meant to get up.

Cye pushed the barrier apart. His eyes were bright and curious. "No, really," he insisted, "Tell me. I want to know who it was."

"Cye," Ryo warned. The other ronin paused, but after a moment, he held out the crutches in a gesture of peace, steadying them while Ryo levered himself out of the chair. His ankle protested the movement, feeling swollen against the cast.

"Maybe it was a practical joke?" Cye offered, refusing to be put off.

Ryo stopped, half-resting on the crutches to stare. "Joke?" he repeated.

Cye laughed, though it was hesitant like it hid some past embarrassment. "You don't want to hear the things my sister would do at her slumber parties."

"Cye, it... wasn't that kind of kiss," Ryo said quietly, heat rising to his face at memory's urging. He pulled at the crutches still steadied by Cye's hand above the grip.

Perplexed, Cye dropped his hands. "What do you mean – "

Mia called from the entrance, "Cye, do you want a ride to the bus stop?"

Cye stood frozen, torn between Ryo's mystery and the necessity of his education. "Okay! Just let me – " He turned back to Ryo, studying him with a frown.

"Have fun at school, Cye," Ryo said lamely. He couldn't get around the other boy to escape, not with the crutches taking up so much extra space.

Cye stared at him sadly. Finally he said, "Ask Rowen, ok?"

"I didn't say it was Rowen," Ryo said automatically.

"You didn't?" Cye asked, tilting his head to the side. He did not wait for a reply, turning primly on the ball of his foot and departing. Ryo stared after him mournfully.

* * *

Rowen didn't come home until the library closed, slipping through Mia's door when the winter sun was already long gone. He pulled cold noodles from the fridge, leaving his books in a wreck on the floor as he wandered the house, eating. 

He came to rest against the door between the living and the dining room. The lights were on, the TV going, relaying a play by play of a sports match earlier that day. Ryo was stretched out on the couch, asleep with one arm beneath his cheek and the other grasping the remote next to him. While Rowen watched, Ryo shivered, pushing his bare feet beneath the pillows at the end of the couch.

Rowen crossed the room, leaving his food on the coffee table while he pulled a worn throw from the back of a chair. He spread the blanket across Ryo slowly, careful not to wake him, still wary of a forgotten kiss.

He lingered over the sleeping boy when he was done, almost against his will bringing up a hand to run his fingers slowly down the fabric of Ryo's sleeve. It was like a consolation prize, drawing fingers against cloth when they remembered skin.

Drowsily, Ryo raised his head, confused to see Rowen there, touching his arm so lightly. "Rowen?" he mumbled, "What are you doing?"

Rowen shook his head, not meeting Ryo's eyes as if he were frightened of being lost. "Keepin' it platonic," he said, and laughed.

Ryo's hand snapped around Rowen's wrist. Rowen looked up, startled, into Ryo's half-awake frown. "I know you kissed me," Ryo said quietly, with the force of blow.

Rowen reeled, mouth coming open in some reply, some excuse that did not exist. He snatched his hand back, staggering to his feet, and ran, meal abandoned behind him.

Ryo, fully awake now, called after him, stricken, "Wait!"

He tried to stand, but he put his bad foot beneath him in his rush, and he collapsed, burying his face in the pillows until the pain went away.

* * *

_He remembers. _

_He knows I kissed him back and that I must have wanted to because I'm not the one on mind-altering drugs. What happens tomorrow, the day after? How can I stay near him and pretend that all I want is to keep him safe? He knows. _

_He knows I'm not selfless. _

Rowen took the steps two at a time. Halfway up, his sock slipped on the carpet, and he went down on one knee, a hand a locked around the banister. He scrambled to his feet, but Ryo did not appear at the bottom of stairs, demanding explanations that Rowen could no longer remember.

God, what _had_ he said to himself when he thought he'd be returning to a house of Ryo's resentment? And during the kiss... had he thought they were going to trounce down the stairs holding hands and make some big announcement? Happily ever after, tra la la?

Yes, Rowen rather thought he had been thinking something like that.

He moved slowly now, tracing a hand along the cool wall, knowing that Ryo could not make chase with his ankle injured like it was, even if the drugs dulled the pain. The hallway that he had just yesterday called a truer home than his own seemed smaller, oppressive as it dwindled to its unlit end.

His room was not the last of the hall, being one of the two along the balcony that faced the lake. He pushed the door open reluctantly because he did not want to see the objective beauty of the landscape beyond his windows. He had come here to hide from the world and to contemplate the difficulties of loving Ryo.

His bed was dark and larger than his mind could make sense of at first. Then the shadow raised it's head, and White Blaze's eyes flung the dim light of the hallway back at him.

Rowen went still, the soft light showing the pale enamel of the cat's bared teeth. He could not force himself to back out of the room. "You were there," he accused. "Don't get mad at me because you didn't stop it."

There was no sound but the tiger's breathing, slow deep breaths, loud like he was preparing to growl but hadn't quite worked up the interest yet. Rowen did not move.

"You should have," he said, more loudly. "Stopped us, I mean."

The tiger stood, silhouetted against the moonlight through the glassed doors behind him, and beckoned with a sharp outward breath, sounding nearly like a dog in that way big dogs have of making the deepest sounds that seem softer to the ear. Now Rowen did pull back, reminded eerily of the tiger's intelligence, his near humanity.

More than that he remembered that this was Ryo's protector, and his guilt returned with his jealously.

He remembered waking from the coma into which Talpa had sent him, seeing Ryo there, bruised and battered and staring up at him in awe. He heard again Ryo's disbelieving laughter that Rowen didn't remember any of the unexpected display of Strata's power over the sky that had saved them both, Hashiba's wild ride.

But Ryo had still been nothing more than a stranger. Rowen had been more worried about Sage, the quiet philosopher who was a real brother in mind as well as battle, than he had about a slight, ferocious boy with eyes like blue coals.

No, it wasn't until Kayura, as he was racing towards the volcano, hoping against hope that Ryo had not been taken or killed, that he had felt real relief to know that he had Ryo's power and fury to back him. To aid him against this mysterious woman-girl who had appeared, bearing dire hints about his friends.

But what did he feel now?

Rowen watched the tiger standing on his bed who wanted something from him that he was only beginning to understand, but no matter how he searched, he couldn't find an answer to the question.

* * *

He left the room as soon as he realized what the tiger wanted from him, remembering how White Blaze had rumbled so triumphantly when Ryo took that first step towards insanity and Rowen had kissed him back. 

There was an angry, matchmaking tiger in his bedroom. It seemed best to make his escape.

The idea might have been encouraging, but the cat obviously didn't understand the line of consent. Ryo had been wasted, Ryo hadn't been thinking, and Ryo might as well have been assaulted by a horny archer.

He was also sitting outside Rowen's room, waiting for him.

His crutches were nowhere in sight, making Rowen wince at the imagined climb up the stairs. Ryo's injured leg was half-extended, held motionless as though the slightest tremor would be unbearable.

Rowen asked, horrified, "Your crutches?"

"I forgot," Ryo said weakly, hunched over with his forehead pressed against his knees.

"When was the last time you took - "

Ryo cut him off, irritated, "_I forgot_." His hands gripped his pants, an unusually furious denial. It was a lie, even if Rowen wouldn't know it. Ryo hadn't taken one of the painkillers since Rowen had smiled at him like that and made him imagine...

Rowen lowered himself to floor beside Ryo, leaning back against the wall, his legs stretched towards his bedroom door. He sighed, passing a hand over his eyes.

"I'm sorry."

"What?" Ryo asked, his head down.

"I shouldn't have..." Rowen took a breath and looked away, "Don't think that I've been secretly... It didn't even _occur _to me until you kissed me – "

"What?" Ryo said, pulling his head up suddenly. "What do you mean _I _kissed you?"

Rowen blinked at him, twisting his hands in his lap, a little off kilter. He hadn't wanted to do more than apologize and forget. "Well, you _did_."

"I didn't!" Ryo insisted, remembering vague kisses, cool hands on his skin.

But Rowen was looking at him with wide eyes, shell shocked like he had never expected such an attack and Ryo felt the seed of doubt. He studied Rowen's face, Rowen who so rarely looked lost, trying to imagine what would have made him do it. All over again, he was in the kitchen watching Rowen force a smile while Mia and Cye looked on.

No, no, no. He'd been sane then, just remembering.

He said fiercely, "Then why did you kiss me back?"

Rowen broke the stare, turning to glare morosely into his bedroom.

"I forgot you were wasted," he said. "I mean, it's like date rape. I want to throw myself off something high when I think about it, except that Strata would probably stop me before I hit the ground."

He glanced back at Ryo. "I'm not interested," he added quickly. "That way."

Rowen found unexpectedly that it was a painful lie to tell because by speaking it, half-imagined fantasies became longing. If only... if only it hadn't happened like it had, maybe he would have tried to... to what? Woohim?

Ryo had nothing to say, maybe he had seen the lie in Rowen's face. Rowen tried again, awkwardly, "So... what now?"

Ryo didn't answer.

"Please don't tell Sage," Rowen said.

Ryo asked numbly, "Why?"

Rowen opened his mouth, closed it. Finally he said, "He says I over-react."

Ryo started. "You? When?"

"Not all the time," Rowen clarified, picturing Halo's bearer with a certain annoyance. For a moment, the distraction freed him from his anxiety. "Just when it comes to... to you." He turned to Ryo suddenly, earnestly. "I don't have a crush on you."

"Okay," Ryo said, but he shifted back. Rowen saw that, and it hurt because Ryo was acting more upset than he had been about just the stupid kiss.

"After Cye and Kento and Sage got caught," he explained desperately, or tried to. Ryo didn't even look like heard. "We had to – you just didn't seem to be taking it well, and then Kayura – that trap – "

He sat up stiffly, bowing his head. Ryo felt the archer move, his eyes flicking back to Rowen, surprised to find him hiding his face.

"I was just worried," Rowen said softly. "God, how many times did I nearly kill myself trying to get you out of there and you still got hurt? Of course nobody gave a shit about me. I didn't have any Inferno armor to wave in their faces, and it was all I could do to keep you alive, much less rescue – "

He put a hand to his face and felt the tears. This was not something he'd ever wanted to dwell on, didn't want to show that the person that Ryo had relied on could be so undone. "Maybe I can't forget about it," he said, with shaky breaths, "I'm sorry if it's... stifling. I didn't mean to kiss you back. I'm sorry."

He started when he felt warmth against his side. Ryo was leaning forward, the length of his arm pressing against Rowen's body. It was such an awkward attempt at comfort and hesitant, but... but, god, it was welcome.

"Why did you kiss me?" There was guilt under those words, like Ryo didn't want to bring it up when Rowen was already such a pitiful sight, but also like he knew the answer. Rowen laughed hollowly.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time?" he guessed, favoring Ryo with a shitty smile and wet eyes.

Ryo frowned, pained. "Rowen – "

And Rowen gave in. " ...because I wanted to." He couldn't meet Ryo's eyes, that gaze that wasn't so much startled as vindicated.

Ryo leaned over. Rowen was looking down and didn't see, watching his fists clench and unclench in his lap. He was honestly surprised when Ryo kissed him.

Then Ryo was moving to a better position, but slowly, with care for the delicate limb on his right. Rowen did not trust himself to move, like he would break whatever illusion had surely settled over them. Mechanically he leaned back, letting Ryo slide in front of him, only putting a hand out to steady the injured leg when Ryo winced.

Ryo kept leaning in to press his lips to Rowen's, but the passion of hazy recollection was absent, leaving only awkwardness behind it. Short confused little kisses that often as not missed their mark.

Rowen didn't want it to stop. He put his hands up to Ryo's ribs, holding him up as he moved, letting him rest on Rowen's solidity. Neither of them was stupid enough to say something, not when they were both too embarrassed, too uncertain to survive any questioning of just what the hell they were doing here in this hallway in Mia's house.

From the stop of the stairs, Cye said flatly, "Oh. My. God."

Ryo jerked up, wild-eyed, rolled back onto his ankles and then he was collapsing – curling forward into Rowen's chest in pain while Rowen stared in shock at the person whose existence had completely slipped his mind.

Then reality got to him, and the warm weight on top of him. "Ryo!" He tried to sit up but it made things worse, moving Ryo when Ryo only wanted to stay as still as possible.

"Why in the hell were you in the hallway?" Cye was demanding.

Rowen glared, furious and unreasonably terrified for the boy collapsed against his chest. "There's a tiger in my room," he said, like it meant anything. "It's got sharp teeth."

Ryo was shaking in his arms. It took Rowen a moment to realized he was laughing. "Ow," Ryo said when the laughter jolted his ankle, but he was smiling.

Cye stared at them shocked, saying stupidly, "So... I'll get the drugs then?" He retreated down the stairs with one last startled glance at his friends lying across each other in the hall.

Rowen looked at Ryo on top of him, managing a sort of twisted smile. "Fuck," he said and bent down to put his cheek against Ryo's hair, laughing. "I'm sorry."

Fingers closed in Rowen's shirt, Ryo whispered, "I forgive you."


End file.
